Golden Sands
by Jeannie-Mckay
Summary: What if one Atlantian had managed to create a WraithHuman hybrid? Would they be able to contain their hunger and live among other humans? When the team stumble across an ancient laboratory where these creatures are being kept, it's decision time! Hiatus
1. Prologue

******Title: Golden Sands**

**Rating: T (for violence, and language in later chapters)**

**Summary: What if one Atlantian had managed to create a Wraith/Human hybrid? Would they be able to contain their hunger and live among other humans? When the team stumble across an ancient laboratory where these creatures are being kept, it's time to find out! Rodney angst, and whumping :)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate Atlantis. I wish I did :(**

**Spoilers: There may be possible references to episodes, from all three series in later chapters. **

**Authors Note: I have no idea where the idea for this story came from, but I hope it's okay. I'll try to keep the chapters coming quickly. And I haven't forgotten about my other story, but my muse wouldn't let me write anymore chapters on that story until I finally got this story out of my head. Hope you enjoy, and please do Read and Review, constructive criticism is always welcome :).**

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**Prologue**

_10,000 years ago._

_The rumblings above ceased suddenly, Kellick looked up carefully. Trying to avoid getting any dust, that was falling slowly from the ceiling, in his already bloodshot eyes. All around him the lights were flickering on and off, as the building he was in lost power. Above him he could hear the screams and shouts, of his people beginning their evacuation towards the Great Ring._

_He looked back down again at the console that stood before him; the lights on the top of it were also flickering in time with the lights. Power draining away every second, valuable power! Power he needed in order to finish his work._

_He finally pressed the last few buttons in his sequence and straightened up, he threw a quick, sorrowful glance around his lab. A silent farewell to his home. Before he hobbled quickly out of the room and the door closed with a quiet 'whoosh'. More rumblings began as Wraith darts began to assault the building once again, sending down missiles to try and destroy every last Lantian still alive in the building._

_The lights in the small room finally flickered out, and it became pitch black. Footsteps could be heard faintly, as someone walked down the hall outside the room. The footsteps stopped outside, and a shot was fired at the door. It did not penetrate the thick metal, and after several failed attempts the thing behind the door stopped firing and began to push against it._

_"What are you doing?" snarled a voice from the corridor; more footsteps could be heard running along the corridor outside._

_"This door will not open, the Lantians may have placed something of value here. We can not let it go unchecked!" After this there was silence for a few moments, before suddenly the door opened. In the doorway were five Wraith, three drones and two males all staring into the room with hungry expressions on their faces._

_Quickly and efficiently the three drones walked into the room and took up positions ready to fire at anything that may attack the two males._

_With their long black coats billowing out behind them in a strange breeze, the two males walked into the room and surveyed it magisterially. One moved towards the 'dead' console, whilst the other moved further down the long room towards several strange looking things set into the walls._

_"This is no use, the power has been drained" snarled the younger Wraith at the console, as he tried to get the device to work. He looked up when his fellow did not answer, and saw the other Wraith staring at something in the wall. Moving swiftly towards him and flanked by one drone he joined his fellow Wraith to look inside the strange things surrounding the walls. As he reached it his jaw dropped, inside was a creature that looked half Wraith, half human. It appeared to be sleeping peacefully, it's chest rising and falling slowly but evenly._

_"How?"_

_"I do not know, but there are more!" Both Wraith moved to the device next to the first, and inside was another creature identical to the first._

_"What is this?" The younger of the two males asked, clearly unnerved. The other said nothing, but simply stared at the strange creature within._

_"We should leave!" The young male said, he began to move off with his drone, but the older of the two put out a hand and touched the metal casing around the Wraith/human hybrid. Suddenly and without warning the door shut quickly, all of the Wraith spun to look at it._

_"What have you done?" Cried the younger male, as he turned once more to look at his fellow. The other Wraith was still staring at the creature within the device, his hand still placed on the casing._

_"Come away!" Commanded the other male, as he hurried towards his friend. Suddenly a strange sound issued from somewhere in the walls, a sound like gas entering the room._

_"We are too late." The older Wraith said as one of the drones began to sway on its feet, before it fell heavily to the floor. One by one the other drones fell onto the cold, metal floor. The two males stayed upright longer, the youngest trying once again to get the console to work in order to save them. The oldest still looking at the creature within the casing._

_After about five minutes both males began to sway, before they fell to the floor unconscious. The gas still poured in, filling the entire room with a horrible smell of burning. After about three more minutes the males stopped breathing, and the gas subsided. A loud click came from the direction of the door, and silence fell once again in the large room._

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**Would Wraith really be friends? Hmmm there's a question to ponder over tonight. Anyway I hope you enjoyed that chapter, and the next one will be up shortly. **


	2. Chapter 1

Hundreds of trees whispered in the light breeze that was sweeping the forest, birds were twittering in the top most branches. Leaves were falling slowly and silently down to earth, as the warm months of what was the Pegasus equivalent of summer changed into autumn. The colours of each leaf differed, most had the beautiful red, brown and gold colourings as was common on most planets, but the further into the forest some of the leaves were black, as though they had died. The tree trunks as well seemed to be a darker shade of brown, if not black the further into the forest you went. But ignoring these unsettling facts, the forest was a perfect picture of tranquillity. Not a sound could be heard apart from the tweeting of birds, until something disturbed the silence.

"Can we please have a rest?" Colonel John Sheppard closed his eyes in despair, as the grating sounds of Doctor Rodney McKay's incessant whining started up again. He had been complaining almost the whole way, and had only stopped when Ronon had turned menacingly on him with his hand resting on his blaster.

John had enjoyed the few moments of peace, before the scientist could resume his usual chatter. In a way McKay's gibbering was comforting, it meant that nothing was wrong. It was if the scientist ever became quiet that you had to worry, that usually meant that he was in trouble.

"For the last time Rodney," John said with patience acquired by being on the same team as McKay for three years "we'll stop when we reach the settlement. You said that you detected some energy readings from that direction, and we're following them."

"Yes, well…" Before McKay could reply a building became visible between the trees, Rodney's eyes widened and he pulled out his hand held scanner. John motioned for Teyla to watch their six, and he heard Ronon walking towards him.

The runner came beside him; neither of them spoke for a while as they continued to walk towards the large building looming up before them.

Finally Ronon broke the silence,

"I don't like this, Sheppard. Something feels wrong." John nodded, he knew better then to dismiss Ronon's 'feelings'. He called back to Teyla,

"Teyla do you sense anything?"

"No Colonel, as far as I am aware there are no Wraith on this planet." John nodded again, he trusted Teyla but he to had a feeling that something wasn't right with this planet.

The only person who seemed oblivious to any such feeling was Rodney, he had his head buried in his scanner, trying to find out the source of the readings which were no doubt coming from the big, scary looking building in front of them.

Finally they reached the tree line and peered out towards the building, it was situated in the middle of a meadow or what had once been a meadow. Now it was a charred mass of burnt grass and flowers, with the horrific sight of bones dotted around the building. With Ronon by his side he moved quickly into the open, his eyes flitting all around the clearing checking for any sign of movement. When nothing happened he moved towards one of the piles of bones and bent down to study it, he was no expert at this stuff but this looked like it had been there for years.

Surely they should have decomposed, he knew for a fact that it took a couple of hundred years for bones to completely decompose but these looked like they'd been here for a bit longer than that.

"Sheppard." John looked up at the sound of his name, to see Ronon stood by a section of the wall that appeared to be a door. Rodney was staring wide eyed around the place, whilst Teyla was patiently trying to get him to move faster.

"After you Ronon." John said jovially, as he reached the runner and stared at the section of the wall that was the door. Ronon smirked, and pulled out his blaster ready to shoot a hole in the door.

"What? You can't just shoot it!" Rodney practically yelled,

"Why not?"

"Because this looks like Ancient design, we can't just blast a hole in the side of some Ancient building!"

"Yes we can."

"No we can't! Look the Ancients must have put some kind of opening mechanism around here somewhere! It'd be better to open the door then blast it open!"

Ronon put his blaster back in it's holster, his expression mutinous. John and Teyla were close to laughing, but one glance from Ronon soon had them looking serious. They searched around for some sort of device that could open the door, but nothing turned up. There were no lit panels anywhere, and Rodney was looking sulky.

"Can we try my way now?" Ronon asked trying to keep the smirk off his face but failing miserably, Rodney didn't say anything but simply glared up at the building.

Ronon pulled out his blaster and fired a single shot at the door. Instead of blasting a nice hole in the metal, the door seemed to absorb the shot. The whole team stared at it in disbelief,

"Okay, how did it do that?" John said to no one in particular, when no one answered he walked towards the door and put his hand against it. The metal was warm, probably from the blast. Slowly he moved his hand an inch or two to the left and he found something sticking out, he ran his hand over it and the door opened silently.

"Ha, see I told you there'd be something like that!" Rodney shouted in glee, "See you guys never listen to me, and I'm nearly almost always right! Ha, well come on then let's go in."

For a few seconds John was speechless with shock, normally Rodney would be the last person to tell them to go into a strange building where anything could be lurking. Finally he managed to regain his composure, and walked smartly through the open door and into the corridor beyond. As he entered the long corridor he noticed that bits of rubble littered the floor around him, it seemed that an air assault had been carried out and bits of the ceiling had caved in.

He heard the other three carefully walking through the open door, he didn't turn back but instead walked further down the corridor towards another door not to far away. As he drew closer to it, an inexplicable feeling of uncertainty flickered through him. He mentally shook himself to try and collect his thoughts, but he could still feel something in his gut that was telling him that this was a bad idea.

He ran his hand along the wall and the door opened with a soft 'whoosh'; the first thing that hit him was a terrible stench of rotting flesh. He began to cough, trying hard not to retch.

"What the hell is that smell?" Rodney asked faintly, as he too fought the urge to throw up.

"I believe it is the stench of rotting flesh." Teyla answered, she had moved past John into the darkened room. Her well-trained eyes flitting across every inch of ceiling, wall and floor and finally spotting the outline of five rotting corpses lying haphazardly on the floor. She turned away quickly; the stench and sight were making her eyes water.

"Wraith." Ronon said simply, he seemed the only one not affected by the horrific sight and smell. He followed Teyla into the room and knelt down next to one of the bodies, he examined it closely, amazingly he did this without touching the body at all.

"This Wraith wasn't killed by the others, or any other creature. There's no external wounds, it must have been something else. Possibly something in the air or..."

"WHAT?" Rodney practically yelled, "There might be an air born pathogen in here and no one bothered to TELL ME!"

"Rodney, if there is an air born pathogen currently in this room then there would have been no way for us to detect it. And also all of us have most likely been exposed, we should contact Atlantis and let them know of our predicament." Teyla looked around at her fellow team members, two of whom nodded their approval. Rodney however was too engrossed in realising his own mortality to notice.

John nodded slowly, trying to think about what was best. Clearly Teyla's idea was the best course of action, but that would mean sending Carson and a medical team over in HAZMAT suits.

"Let's have a scout around first, we have no idea if whatever killed these Wraith really was air born! Let's check it out first. McKay can you work these consoles?" He turned to see the scientist's eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing slowly. He looked like a fish that had just seen a rather large shark coming towards it.

"Rodney?"

"Hmm?"

"Consoles, go work"

"Oh what? Oh right. Now you need me, a minute ago it was 'oh be quiet McKay' now its…"

"It's still 'be quiet McKay', but now it's got an additional bit of 'try to get these consoles to work'." John smirked as McKay walked towards the nearest console, a quiet victory for Sheppard.

"What about the um... Wraith?" Rodney asked from his position by the console, Ronon walked noiselessly towards the first and unceremoniously slung it over his back. He then quickly moved over to the door and out into the corridor, probably to dump them in the forest somewhere. Quickly Ronon returned for the other four corpses, and finally the job was done. Rodney thankfully began to get to work on those consoles, his brow furrowed in concentration.

John moved to the door so that he could routinely check outside, he didn't want to be caught out at all. The Wraith had managed to sneak up on him too many times before; this was one of the times when he wanted to outsmart them. If they were still around here.

The minutes trickled past, punctuated by the occasional grunt from Rodney or the occasional yelp as something in the console electrocuted him. John couldn't help but smile as Rodney began to mutter to himself, about how he was too good for this kind of work and why didn't machines respect him?

Ronon was leant against a wall, fairly near to the scientist just in case anything went wrong. Teyla was stood further down the room, her eyes flickering from side to side as she tried to see through the enveloping darkness.

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Please do review, I like to know what you guys think of my stories. It helps me become a better writer :) And thanks to all of those who have reviewed already. Hopefully I've managed to keep mistakes to a minimum, and thanks again. 


	3. Chapter 2

Yay the next chapter, this is betad (sp?) by Stargate-Obsessed.

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"Ah ha!" Rodney yelled triumphantly, as he removed his head from under the console. He was smiling broadly, as he stepped away from his laptop, which was perched precariously on the top of the console.

" Finished?" John asked as he walked away from the door, and towards the scientist, his eyes still scanning the entire area for any threats.

"No Colonel, I just said 'Ah ha!' because I wanted you to go and find me a turkey sandwich." Rodney's words were dripping with his usual sarcasm; he looked for a moment at the Colonel and then rolled his eyes and turned to his other teammates.

"As the Colonel so aptly deduced, I'm finished." He threw a withering glance at Colonel Sheppard before continuing, "I think I can now get at least the lights to work."

"Just the lights?" Ronon asked looking disappointed, Rodney turned to look at him and rolled his eyes once more.

"Well I'm sorry if I can't get anything else to work right now, but I have only been working for about twenty minutes! This stuff is complicated, I'll need time."

"Okay Rodney calm down," John fought hard not to look at Ronon or Teyla, just in case he burst out laughing. "Just do what you can."

Rodney turned his back on John and began to type away at the keys on his laptop, after a few seconds the lights flickered on.

"Holy…" Words failed John as he looked around the room; there were what looked like 'pods' all along the walls. Hundreds, possibly even thousands of them all down the very, very long room.

"What are they?" Teyla asked to no one in particular, her gaze like the others fixed on the pods.

Rodney lifted his hand held scanner from his TAC vest and held it up to his eyes; he lowered it slowly and moved forwards towards the nearest pod. He moved swiftly until he was right in front of it,

"They're alive." He said quietly, his hand moving up to wipe away what looked like frost on the 'window' into the pod.

"Rodney!" John said sternly, he didn't trust this at all. It could be some kind of Wraith trick, or anything. He wasn't going to risk it, not this time.

"What?" Rodney asked, his hand inches from the pod,

"Don't touch it!"

"What? Why not? I'm just gunna see what's in there."

"No McKay! Don't. Touch. It. That's an order!"

"Well I'm a civilian and I don't take orders from pompous, arrogant soldiers!" John's eyes widened, this wasn't like McKay at all. Well it kind of was, but he seemed worse somehow.

"Rodney!" But too late McKay had already begun to brush some of the frost off the window, his face set and determined. They all held their breath, waiting for something dreadful and dramatic to happen. Nothing happened, well a bit of dust fell from the high ceiling, but apart from that nothing dramatic or dreadful happened at all.

"See," Rodney said, his voice trembling slightly "nothing to worry about."

John grabbed Rodney by the front of his vest, his eyes burning with anger.

"Rodney! Don't you understand what an order is? I expressly told you NOT to touch it, and what do you do? Damn it Rodney anything could have happened!"

"Well nothing did happen!" Rodney cried trying to push John backwards, but only succeed in loosing the grip the Colonel had on his vest slightly.

"That's not that point! Something could have…"

"Colonel?" John turned his head to look at Teyla, who was gazing worried up at the two bickering men. Ronon was on the other side of them, his gaze reflecting that of Teyla's, worried and slightly confused.

John looked back at Rodney, and slowly took his hands off the scientist's vest. He met McKay's gaze and looked away quickly,

"Sorry Rodney, I dunno what just happened."

"Me neither." Both men were looking pointedly down at the floor, trying to avoid the other's gaze.

"I believe now would be an appropriate time to dial Atlantis, and send for Doctor Beckett." Teyla placed her hand on John's arm soothingly; he nodded and turned towards the door.

"I think I'll stay here," Rodney said, his eyes drawn back to the 'pod' " and see what's inside here. I mean umm… well you're not going to be long are you. Just to the 'gate and back. Not far, and I might be able to get more systems up and running." John gazed at the scientist for a minute before nodding again,

"Okay, Rodney you can stay here. Teyla you stay with him," and he added in a whisper " keep an eye on him." She smiled, and nodded.

"Okay Ronon, let's go." John and Ronon quickly moved towards the door, and out into the dark corridor beyond.

XXXXXXXXX

"Oh my…." Teyla turned from her position by the door, to see Rodney staring wide-eyed at the screen of his laptop.

"What?"

"They're…they're… Wraith!" He said staring at the pods all along the wall. Teyla quickly brought up her P-90, and walked carefully towards Rodney.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" he snapped, "Haven't you sensed anything?"

"No." She said grimly, her eyes scanning the room before she moved her hand up to her radio.

"Colonel Sheppard." Nothing but static answered her, she raised her hand to try again but Rodney stopped her.

"It's the pods, they must be creating some kind of interference. We won't be able to reach them from in here." Teyla looked at him, before she looked quickly at the laptop in front of him.

"Wait." She said, her head tilted to one side as she read the information pouring into the laptop. "It says that these are only part Wraith!"

"What?" Rodney glanced down at the screen, and typed furiously into the keyboard. "Oh my God, they're hybrids. Wraith/Human hybrids."

Suddenly Teyla sensed something, the unmistakable feeling of another presence entering her mind.

"Rodney!"

"What?"

"Wraith!"

"Oh no!" He picked up his laptop hurriedly, and ran to his backpack. He hurriedly stuffed his things in it, trying to get it all to fit in. Teyla moved towards the entrance of the room, her P-90 held up ready for the attack.

"Hurry Rodney."

"I'm coming, I'm coming! You guys have no patience!" Finally he managed to shove the last piece of equipment back into his pack, and he hurried to the entrance. He passed Teyla and ran out into the corridor, with a final look back at the pods Teyla followed.

As they ran out of the corridor and through the former door, they began to hear the unmistakable whine of the Wraith darts.

They ran out into the meadow of scorched grass, and towards the tree line. Teyla risked a glance up and saw that there were at least 3 darts above them, gliding gently down towards the building.

"Hurry Rodney!" She cried as she ran in front of him, trying to get him to pick up his speed.

"Teyla! I… can't… run… that… fast!" He panted, as he tried to keep pace with her. A stitch was already making itself known, and there was no way he was going to get to the 'gate if he kept going at this speed.

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Hope you liked it, and once again please do review!

Thanks


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